A new year: new rounds new opportunities? 2020 became a different year for every company than we imagined at the beginning. Marketing budgets were scaled back as a result of the corona crisis. We also saw, among other things, a shift from traditional advertising budgets to content marketing. What other trends can we expect to see? These are the content marketing trends 2021.
In recent years, the focus has been heavily on marketing technology - funnel thinking. This consists of gated content, lead nurturing and Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs). A good strategy, but there is also a turning point in it. If you put a lot of (good) content under lock and key, some leads will reluctantly leave their data. They don't actually want to enter your funnel at all. They just want one-time information. So this way, you do collect a lot of leads, but not always from leads who are genuinely interested in your services or products. In other words, these are "low" quality leads. While we have just learned in 2020 how important customer relationships are. Both retaining, and building and strengthening relationships.
Because of this, companies focus less on getting leads deeper into the funnel in content, but rather on what actually helps leads. As a result, you get fewer MQLs, but more Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).
So the funnel thinking becomes less. This allows advertising, content marketing and branding to flow together better.
As marketing budgets shift, the focus is more on measurable results. However, there is a difference in ROI when you look at online content that leads directly to a conversion. You can demonstrate this directly. But for an email series or blog series that engages people over the long term, this is harder to demonstrate.
What matters is the combination between the two: short-term lead generation tactics with long-term audience building. Therefore, it is important that your marketing plan include at least SEA, display and social advertising, conversion optimization and reporting. You can then gain quick insight into short-term performance and follow this through to long-term goals.
Almost every company creates and publishes quality content these days. Content that makes customers and prospects smarter. The famous how to blog post is especially popular. But if everyone is doing this, you are no longer really unique as a brand. This is causing brands to take a different approach. The focus is now turning more to unique, valuable educational content. Customer education is one of the new content marketing trends. Companies are increasingly integrating their educational offerings into their marketing offerings. For example, consider LinkedIn Learning.
That communication is becoming increasingly human-to-human is already old news. Yet it is striking that many companies still communicate from the name of their organization, rather than a person. However, people are more credible than brands, which is why even thought leadership is increasingly shifting to a real person rather than an organization.
That this trend continues can also be seen in the declining organic reach of company pages on social media. The algorithms determine what followers get to see. Internal experts are now being used more to create and publish valuable content in order to claim thought leadership. Especially in large B2B companies, you see a shift taking place. Traditional channels are no longer reaching their target audience. Partly due to the effects of corona, the digitization of these companies has accelerated tremendously.
These were the content marketing trends expected in 2021. Logically, the implications of COVID-19 affect these trends. Fortunately, content marketing strategy is here to stay.
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